Poor Things: A Movie Review
Ada Lambert | February 8, 2024
Yorgos Lathimos, director of popular movies such as “The Favourite,” “The Killing of a Sacred Deer” and “The Lobster” is known for his strange and somewhat disturbing style. His most recent film, “Poor Things,” hit theatres on Dec. 8, 2023, and has garnered a lot of attention since then.
“Poor Things” follows the aftermath of scientist Godwin Baxter’s risky experiment performed on a pregnant woman who had taken her own life. When he stumbles upon her body, a lightbulb goes off in his head. He will remove her brain and replace it with the dead baby’s brain, a way to give new life to her body. While the ethics of this experiment are questionable, he succeeds and births a grown woman with a baby’s brain — Bella Baxter.
Bella, at the start of the film, has little cognitive ability. She can talk — a bit — but her sentences string together all wrong. Her “father,” Baxter, has someone come to monitor her behavior — she is an experiment after all. She wears a beautiful frilly top with short shorts, a hilarious spin on the era. Everything around Bella is tied to her mental maturity, so all her chairs are extremely large and the furniture in the kitchen towers over her — this creates a visual fallacy that she is a small child even though her body is fully developed.
She grows increasingly curious about this grown body of hers. At first, it was an accident. She touches herself and reacts excitedly, not knowing what she just discovered. This becomes a habit of interest — one that gets her in trouble. When the maid of the house goes to grab Bella’s plate after she has finished her meal, Bella explains this newfound hobby of hers. When the maid looks at her warily, Bella grabs the maids…vagina… yeah. She just wanted to show her, of course, but the maid shrieks. “BELLA!”
This is the start of Bella’s sexual awakening. Her father’s debaucherous lawyer, Mark Ruffalo’s character Duncan, comes to the house and is infatuated with Bella (which is gross and uncomfortable) and comes back to visit her in the night. At this point I am extremely nervous, seeing as Bella is vulnerable and this strange dude is at her window. But I am happy to report that this movie does not feed into the cliche “woman gets taken advantage of and grows as a person” trope. Bella is invigorated when Duncan offers to whisk her off to Spain for a weekend. She knows that he has something she wants: sex.
Her father is hesitant, especially since Bella is technically engaged to the person who monitors her behavior (strange, I know), but he realizes that he cannot control Bella and that she will do what she wants to do anyway. So she goes. She embarks on a tumultuous and enlightening journey to becoming a free and independent woman, no longer under the constraints of male control.
“Poor Things” is strange, I will admit, but I loved it. There was something so beautiful about Bella experiencing the world with such childlike wonder and whimsy, even in moments of injustice and fear. Her world is expanding rapidly and so, as it goes, she is learning at an accelerated rate. This film explores the complexities of womanhood and coming into oneself. There is an air of discomfort and blunt honesty at points, but this is something that feels essential in a film that is meant to empower women and destigmatize sex.
If you enjoy outlandish films as much as I do, this one is a ride worth taking. “Poor Things” has left theaters but will be streaming soon, so keep an eye out.